What's the truck got to do with it?

Fred Thompson could have traveled Tennessee in an Edsel and still beaten Jim Cooper for that 1994 Senate seat.

Take it from the first reporter to ride with Thompson in the now-fabled rented red Chevy pickup.

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On Aug. 5, 1994, one day after the Republican primary, I rode with Thompson. The first stop was at Joe’s Place, a diner in Woodbury, Tenn.

There, standing in front of the sign for the blue plate special, which was flanked by pictures of Jesus and Elvis, I learned of the power of Thompson to speak plainly — and something of his philosophy.

“You better get me up there before they outlaw those things,” I heard Thompson tell a woman puffing on a cigarette.

I was more impressed by Thompson’s grunt than his gimmick.

Now, as Thompson runs for president, it has become part of the standard bio that the pickup truck turned around a campaign that was 20 points behind that of Cooper, a 12-year Democratic congressman. Good script for a movie, but it’s not reality.

By the time Thompson hit the road, it was clear that Cooper was in trouble, despite his image as a brainy moderate.

It’s true that an early poll in February had Cooper up 37 percent to 16 percent for Thompson, but 47 percent were undecided. Cooper was getting national headlines over his alternative to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health care plan, and Thompson hadn’t even formally announced.

Then, as now, Thompson’s campaign had appeared to stumble and slumber during the summer. He fired his first two campaign managers before finding Bill Lacy, who has returned to run his presidential campaign.

But Thompson, who faced token opposition in the primary, was just lying low while the political headlines were dominated by primaries for governor and the heated race between Bill Frist and Bob Corker for the Republican nomination to oppose Democratic Sen. Jim Sasser.

Cooper’s problems were deeper.

If Democrats had been smart, Cooper already would have been a senator. But in an act of sheer cronyism, Democratic Gov. Ned McWherter chose State Treasurer Harlan Mathews to fill the middle two years of Vice President Al Gore’s Senate term, leaving Cooper to have to fight Thompson from a rural, east-to-middle-Tennessee district with no major media outlets.

Cooper’s battles had won him headlines in Washington but no friends at the White House or traditional Democratic allies. And his support for free trade angered the state AFL-CIO.

The party’s priority was saving Sasser, the incumbent who was supposed to be the next Senate majority leader, from Frist, who was pouring personal millions into the race.